Do people like Javascript?

TL;DR: I don't know... Some of them.

In some Facebook groups about programming that I'm part of (yeah, I’m still on that), beginners post a lot asking for guidance of where to start or “What’s better, language X or Y?“. After a couple of years of trying to help, I've noticed one thing about others' responses that motivated me to write this: people frequently mock Javascript, saying it's bad.

It’s no secret that Javascript is, in fact, very popular. It’s popular on Github, it’s popular on universities and it’s been a couple of months since I’ve seen a job offer that didn’t require Javascript in some way. So, why all that hate I see?

Screenshot from Wat presentation

Always backed up with some code executions like the ones from Wat, those blame JS for its weak typing. Sometimes also for IEEE754. I assume that this could be challenging for who's starting to learn, but, come on: hardly. Especially on the age of Typescript.

What I see is some experienced but conservative programmers, who might've spent the last 10 years of their lives coding on a platform that doesn't change, and feel like in hell with the crazy forever-changing ecosystem. Some of them are truly bothered by the unstable state of technologies, and some of them are just afraid of being left out of the buzz.

But I like Javascript and its ecosystem I lot. I enjoy seeing different people trying to solve problems in so many different ways that I can't keep up with them... And, lastly, I love how easy it is to create things today. Tools like Firebase, React and Gatsby.js create an amazing empowerment experience for those who aren't software engineers but can create maybe not enterprisey apps but useful apps. Help their communities, their parent's store and so on.

I don't know about you, but, from the products I've developed until now, the ones I'm most proud of are not those with great technical challenges. In fact, it's the CRUD PWA for handling payments on a closed event of a group of mine; the simple report generator used on my dad's shop; a simple browser extensions for my college's system.

The Javascript community has almost every library possible on the world and the Web is each day more integrated with native systems, it's truly amazing what the web can do today!

Amazing design and modern programming languages are great, I know, but, IMO, the majority of people don't care all that much about it. It's only about how fast you can deliver useful things.